KHARTOUM: The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday that fighters in conflict-hit Sudan had occupied the national public laboratory holding samples of diseases including measles and polio, creating an “extremely dangerous” situation.
WHO’s representative in Sudan Nima Saeed Abid said that fighters kicked out all the staff and technicians from the lab, which is completely under the control of one of the warring parties as a military base. He did not say which of the warring parties had occupied the laboratory.
Abid said he had got a call from the chief of the national laboratory in Khartoum on Monday, a day before a US-brokered seventy-two-hour cease-fire between Sudan’s fighting generals officially came into effect after ten days of urban combat.
He said that there is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the laboratory. It held samples of various deadly diseases, including polio, measles, and cholera. The director of the laboratory had also warned of the danger that “depleting stocks of blood bags risk increasing due to lack of power, Abid said.
He added that bio-risk hazards are also extreme in addition to chemical hazards due to the lack of functioning generators.
WHO confirms attacks
WHO also said it had confirmed fourteen attacks on health care during the fighting, killing 8 and injuring two persons. The war in Sudan has brought forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against those of his ex-deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the Rapid Support Forces.
The Sudanese health ministry has given the number of fatalities so far at 459, with a further 4,072 injured, the health body said Tuesday, adding that it could not verify that number. –AFP
